


Tony + Retirement = Migraines for Steve

by betheflame



Series: Shorts & Drabbles 2020 [12]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Shuri (Marvel), Banter, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, M/M, Minor Carol Danvers/Natasha Romanov, Sassy Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:55:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26497495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betheflame/pseuds/betheflame
Summary: Tony's retired. Steve's stress level is not.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: Shorts & Drabbles 2020 [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1647499
Comments: 30
Kudos: 243





	Tony + Retirement = Migraines for Steve

**Author's Note:**

> This is for POTS, specifically Nano and Neb for their prompts this morning, but for everyone else who makes that server my fandom home.

“STEVEN.”

Steve licked his lips to hold back a grin and glanced over at Carol, who was making the exact same face.

The roar came closer.

“STEVEN. GRANT. ROGERS. STARK.”

“Oh, you got all-named,” Carol said with a low whistle. “He’s pissed.”

Steve waved her off. “He’s only actually angry when I get no names and he tries to use the suit on his own. This is fun mad.”

“Fun mad means I need my noise-cancelling headphones later, doesn’t it?”

“It’s never a bad bet,” Steve admitted and then turned his attention to the doorway, where his husband was standing, covered in flour.

“Can I ask,” Tony said sweetly, blinking away white powder, “why the flour seems to have become sentient?”

“Because Carol banned you from cooking on the ship and I knew you wouldn’t listen,” Steve replied.

“I want to make pasta,” Tony said. “I need to figure out what to add to the water to make it work.”

“No,” Steve said calmly, “you need to respect Carol’s fear of you blowing up her ship for the fourth time.”

“Do I need to be here for this?” Carol said from her position on the couch.

“Only if you want to join,” Steve drawled.

“You are a little shit and a menace and I want to defame every single one of your Smithsonian exhibits,” Carol replied. “Model of purity and the American way, my alien ass.”

“Can we focus on how my husband is sabotaging my dreams?” Tony asked Carol, with a whine in his voice.

“But he’s making mine come true,” Carol replied, “and I can kill both of you with my eyes, and my wife can do it with her thumb, so maybe I’ve earned some respect around here?”

“Captain?” Sasha, Carol’s AI, called into the room. “Agent Romanova is requesting your presence in the galley. And Mr. America, she has requested that you keep Mr. Stark out of the room for several moments.”

Steve rolled his eyes at his call sign up on the ship. They’d let Peter program it as an experiment. At this point, however, no one was sure if Peter did it to be respectful or to be a troll. Considering Shuri had helped him, Steve’s money was on the latter.

“That answers one question,” Carol responded. “Behave, gentlemen.”

“Only four days in my life, Khaleesi,” Tony quipped. “Quota’s out.”

She affectionately patted his shoulder on her way out - causing a plume of flour to rise through the room.

The men stared at each other for a moment before Steve spoke. “I get that you’re bored. I get that retirement isn’t what you wanted. I get all that. We talked about it all with Dr. Baker last week. But you also promised to try.”

Tony glared at him for a few moments. “I’m itchy.”

Steve got up. “In your soul or your fingers? Or your skin, because who knows what planet that flour came from.”

“All, actually,” Tony confessed.

“Well, two and three are easy fixes,” Steve said, lacing his fingers through Tony’s and dragging him down the corridor towards their quarters.

“If you put me in the shower I might turn into a paste,” Tony protested.

“Well, I’m not blowing you as you are now, so which risk do you want to take?”

Tony paused only for a moment. “Technically, I think I can’t become dough without eggs, but I need to look more into the chemistry of baking and -”

He was still talking when Steve shoved him into the shower and swallowed him whole.

He stopped talking then.

* * *

“Cats. Your next solution is cats?”

Steve nodded. “Buck, he’s got to have projects and we banned him from nearly anything that’ll blow himself up because his new arm can’t take it. Until Shuri figures out that new compound, he’s got to actually behave like a mortal and -”

“And your boy ain’t done that since the damn womb,” Sam interjected. The pair had just gotten back from a mission with the Young Avengers that had - to the best of Steve’s understanding - involved exploding drums of dye that had turned Peter and Kamala completely orange and then also marauding goats.

“Did he really do the entire pastry certification at CIA in two months?” Bucky clarified.

“Six, actually, because he kept going after the basic one,” Steve said. “I honestly had no idea there were so many different kinds of dough.”

“Well, anytime he wants to make that lemon cake with the lavender again, he can just deposit trays of it into our apartment,” Sam said. “I’d probably leave Bucky’s boring ass for that cake.”

“The cake can’t blow you back, jackass.”

“Do we know that? Have we tested? Let me call Parker,” Sam teased.

“So,” Bucky said, as he flipped off his boyfriend and addressed Steve, “he needs a project.”

“I just said that,” Steve said, his tone slightly exasperated.

Bucky cut his eyes over to Sam, who nodded.

“Well, if he wants to build us a house, we’ve decided to move to the Finger Lakes compound.”

Steve’s jaw dropped. “Together. We’re actually acknowledging -”

“Hey, now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Sam held up a hand. “I still hate him.”

“Rent in Brooklyn is just getting obnoxious,” Bucky interjected. “And I’m tired of scaring EMTs with my arm when we visit Sam’s in Baltimore.”

“Why are EMTs involved at all?” Steve asked.

“Do you want to know?” Sam asked. “Ask yourself - you who has known this knucklehead longer than the internet has existed - if you really want to know the answer to that.”

Steve blinked a few times. “Tony’ll be thrilled.”

* * *

“In the last two years,” Steve said to Shuri, “he’s set up a cat rescue, opened a mail-order bakery, started fourteen foundations, and made my hair go grey. Are you sure his arm is ready for battle again?”

“Positive,” Shuri said with a smirk. “We are all as eager as you are to get Stark back, Steve. You’re not the only one who cannot handle his retirement.”

Steve nodded and fingered the letter in his pocket. “Final question.”

“Yes?”

“The arm, does it have the new warming stuff like Buck’s does?”

Her eyebrow cocked. “Why?”

He handed her the paper and her eyes went wide. She smiled up at him. “It does now.”

* * *

In the days after Everything, Tony and Steve had made several promises to each other. One, the literal minute one of them wanted to go to therapy, they went. Two, Tony would talk to Helen about stabilizing Extremis and Shuri about repairing some battle damage. Three, once the first priority was in a good place and promise number two had been fulfilled, they’d talk about adopting.

Science made their biological ages match - their souls had mated so long ago that it really was just a formality of fatherhood potential to sort biology - and so they’d made it happen. Carol’s ex, Maria, had offered surrogacy, but they both felt that as two orphans, adopting was the way to go.

Amelia, Lucy, and Marcus - their trio of siblings they’d adopted together - had certainly turned their lives upside down. Steve had no idea his husband loved fuzzy slippers as much until Marcus’ teething had broken both of them and Tony spent most days in various states of pajamas.

“ANTHONY.”

Tony turned to a giggling Marcus, who was strapped into a high seat of Tony’s own design next to his main holographic workbench. “You’re going to save me here, buddy. We’re going to show Papa your new tooth and he’s going to forget all about how I used the last of the toothpaste without adding more to the Instacart like I promised him I would!”

“Tony, we have -”

“Marcus cut another tooth!” Tony shoved their infant into Steve’s arms, which predictably turned the man into a much more joyful version that had come down to the workshop.

“Marcus! Great job, buddy! But if your dad thinks this will distract me from the fact that he promised me he’d tell me if any of the Young Avengers were staying over and yet I nearly just flashed Kamala in the kitchen, he has another thing coming.”

“Oh, I thought the tone was about the toothpaste,” Tony said.

“What about the toothpaste?”

Retirement or not, nothing really changed.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked the story, I'd love to know! Kudos and comments are life giving. If you're not sure what to say in the comment, know that I take keyboard smashes and emojis as full love. So, if you liked it more than just a kudos, dropping a ":heart:" is great and I thank you in advance.
> 
> Find me on [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/betheflame1) or [Tumblr](http://betheflame.tumblr.com) for more on these yahoos. You can also submit prompts and cajole me into writing faster - it usually works. If you're on Discord, I'm definitely there, too, and probably hanging in the [Put on the Suit Stony Server. ](https://discord.gg/z5WSqbS)  
>   
> Oh! And FestiveFerret and I have a [fandom podcast](http://www.podonthesuit.com) if you're so inclined.  
>   
> 


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